Why branding is everybody’s business

When you arrive, you’re greeted warmly by the staff. They offer you a drink—the first but certainly not the last. Your guide enthusiastically explains the company’s history and the distilling process, then expertly navigates you through the tasting experience. As you look around the distillery, you notice that everything, bottles and décor alike, has a touch of copper on it, reminiscent of the huge copper stills used in the gin-making process. And when you leave, goody bag in hand, you feel like you’ve learnt a lot and have been well looked after.

?This is what it feels like when everyone in the business has the tools they need to stay on-brand. This is brand harmony.

?We looked at public reviews of the Sipsmith Distillery to inform the description above. And the overwhelming impression we gained was that, at every level of the business, the Sipsmith brand is cohesive and upheld by the employees, from the website to the in-store experience, from the packaging to the light fixtures. The result? Customers know exactly who the brand is and what it stands for, which in turn builds trust and positively impacts ROI.

In February’s article we mentioned how important brand cohesion is. If your brand is not performing as well as it could, is struggling to stay relevant, or simply needs a new breath of life, there is one key thing you need to do before you consider a refresh or a rebrand. You need to ensure your guidelines are clear, thorough, and being understood and used by your employees across all areas of the business.?

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What happens when your employees don’t have the tools to stay on-brand??

Poor Sophie in accounting, who wasn’t told about the updated brand guidelines, keeps sending out invoices using the old fonts. Harry in HR always misses the mark a bit when he writes about the brand in job listings. And the new marketing intern isn’t entirely certain what tone of voice they should be writing the social media posts in. With each divergence from the brand, however minor or extreme they may be, the brand is diluted and weakened.?

For an established business, anything off-brand can look sloppy and unprofessional, and diminish the brand in the customer’s eyes. The same is true for start-ups. It’s harder to regain reputability without the established base of trust and recognisability, so they may seem confused and unsure of themselves—not the sort of company customers want to be giving their money to.?

For every business, no matter the size, remaking off-brand content and assets to be on-brand takes time and money. Spend a little extra time early on giving your employees the right tools to implement your branding. Then they’ll get it right the first time, saving you valuable resources later on.

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What tools do you need to stay on-brand??

If you haven’t already set out your brand guidelines in a clear and detailed way, this should be your first step—without this, it’s almost impossible to have cohesion in any area of the brand. Your guidelines should begin with your brand values and principles (contradicting these can be detrimental to your brand integrity), as well as including more practical elements such as tone of voice, design and styling.?

Your guidelines should be made available to everyone in the company, no matter their role. You may also want to consider workshops and training to help employees and new hires fully understand your branding requirements. It can be valuable to bring in a third party to help with this stage— as experts who hold no preconceptions or biases about the brand, we can simplify the training process for you and ensure everyone has an unshakeable grasp of your guidelines. As David C. Baker put it, “you can’t read the label from inside the jar”.

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Let’s recap?

Branding spans aesthetic, customer experience, attitude, personality and values. Cohesion across these areas starts with clarity in your guidelines and all employees having access to them. But access alone is not enough. For the best results, employees must fully appreciate all aspects of the brand.Once they do, every decision made for your business can be value-led and aligned with the rest of your output, leading to a myriad of benefits such as improved recognisability and greater levels of trust.